Saying ‘thank you’ is different than being grateful.
Saying smart things is different than being wise.
Saying you don’t know everything is different than knowing you always have something to learn.
Saying ‘I listen’ is different than ‘I hear.’
Saying ‘I see’ is different than ‘I value.’
Saying you’re open to feedback is different than being open for feedback.
Saying truth is different than living it.
Saying ‘I watch’ is different than ‘I observe.’
Saying it matters is different than making it matter.
Saying ‘I accept you’ is different than showing unconditional positive regard.
Saying ‘be like Jesus’ is different than being like Jesus.
Saying ‘trust me’ is different than being worthy of trust.
Saying how necessary it is to serve is different than helping pick up the pieces.
Saying ‘I have a story’ is different than telling an accurate narrative.
Saying ‘you’re enough’ is different than actually leveling the playing field.
Saying that it’s important to be there is different than humbly showing up.
Saying ‘I understand’ is different than vulnerable empathy.
Saying ‘I think…’ is different than asking ‘how is…’
Saying that grace abounds is different than abounding in grace.
One without the other is empty.
I strive to be genuinely and authentically both+and. THAT is what I want to be known for.
This day in 2018:
In the Distance
I found myself very “distant” today…I’d drift away into preoccupation but then in that place, there wasn’t much substance to my thoughts.
I’d have a weird anticipatory feeling in my gut.
I’d realize I was clenching my jaw.
I’d have to be so mindful to come back to the present.
I thought more about it tonight and it occurred to me that maybe I was placing myself back in the days and moments leading up to my mastectomy. The brain and the body remember trauma and it makes total sense that my head, heart, spirit, gut…even my jaw…all remember that day like it was yesterday. I close my eyes and visualize talking with my anesthesiologist who was telling me that his job was to keep me alive and he was honored to do so… I close my eyes and visualize the markings on my body telling the surgeons where to cut and remove parts of my body. I close my eyes and see my nurses’ faces as they get IVs started. I close my eyes and remember waking up from surgery and looking down imagining what it was going to look like to have nothing there once the drugs wore off and the bandaging was removed.
There is a very real possibility that I’ll wake up this time with nothing there, too.
It makes sense why my mind was in distant places today. It makes sense that my body remembers the pain and the anguish that it has endured. And while this surgery has a different feel to it (“reconstruction” connotates “fixing” and “repairing”), we are still talking extreme pain and massive unknowns.
1 day. 1. O.N.E. So strange to be here.
This day in 2019:
Cloud 9
Survivor’s gratitude <—– ME —–> Pleading heaven’s rescue.
What an interesting tension…
This morning, while driving in my car, I found myself declaring, out loud, my gratitude to God as if He was sitting in my passenger seat. “God, I am so grateful for my life. My husband. My kids. My parents. My family and friends. You. It’s just so good.” This un-forced moment of thankfulness made me thankful that I can experience thankfulness in the midst of the every-day-hard.
I recognize that often my writing is heavy, low and despairing. I recognize that it can sometimes be difficult to read because I don’t seem to be getting better or I don’t seem to have a positive go-get-‘em attitude. I recognize that I don’t fill my posts and pictures with pink ribbons and inspirational quotes and ‘at least’ humor like how my boobs are fake because my real ones tried to kill me.
The reality is that because I have survived this far, I have a husband to love, kids to invest in, parents to cherish, family and friends to share my time with and a job I have to go to…And I have to get up. And show up. And choose to participate.
No doubt am I grateful that I get to live this life….but the seconds that make the minutes that make the hours that make the day are filled with the beyond-words-exhaustion that is surviving. Literally every step I walk, I hurt. I will be hit with an unpredictable upset stomach that is hard to ignore. I will get an unexpected headache so smashing that I get dizzy and nauseous, requiring me to locate my nearest trashcan or toilet. The hot flashes that flare up out of nowhere and melt me, only getting worse by the second and that seemingly last forever. And the depressive low that is woven into my every moment. By the time I rest my weary body, soul and mind at the end of the day, the culmination of it all comes crashing into me. It is then that I sit and put down on paper on all that I was holding, all that I chose not to expose the outside world to and all that I chose to hold close because not everyone needs to see the inside of the hell of cancer. It is then that I get to write the words that continue the story…..the reality……..the truth of surviving.
Yet, when I found myself declaring gratitude, as if I was on cloud nine and not ever touched by cancer’s destruction, I realized that I most certainly can hold cloud-nine moments with the hell-of-cancer ones. I can most certainly hold the tension of survivor’s gratitude with the pleading of heaven’s rescue. That I can walk in the truth of surviving because that truth holds both.
No post for 6/23/2020